


Spanish Dust

by OldShrewsburyian



Category: The Hour (TV)
Genre: Churches & Cathedrals, Español | Spanish, Ficlet, Gen, Maps, POV Female Character, POV Third Person, Photography, Pre-Canon, Spanish Civil War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:29:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23056996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldShrewsburyian/pseuds/OldShrewsburyian
Kudos: 8





	Spanish Dust

The village, though small, does have a name on the map. But it is located at a torn corner somewhere beyond Castrojieriz, and afterwards, Lix can never quite remember what it was. She does remember this: that she turned along the path that led to it because she needed somewhere to fill her canteen. Perhaps she turned, too, because the expanse of the meseta had become too much to bear, its emptiness too vast. She had taken one photo that she had good hopes of. Its boundary was defined by a grange with one wall collapsed (the victim of fire, or perhaps an airplane lightening its load of bombs, returning home from a mission.) Next to that lay a field, furrowed but unworked, and between the two a detritus of farm machinery, harrow and rake abandoned. Beyond this only a line of scrubby trees, and the distant, inhospitable hills.

She had walked grateful for the shade provided by a copse, for the relief provided by the rustling of leaves, a release from silence. When she arrived in the village, that too seemed abandoned. It was mid-morning; she kept expecting to turn a corner and discover what was keeping the villagers: a good cut of meat at the butcher’s, or a soldier, or a piece of news. She saw no one. The village church was as silent as the rest. Emerging into what must count as the square, Lix discovered a man. She would have put his age at no more than fifty, but his face was weathered and seamed. Like all his ilk, he wore a cardigan, slightly faded. He stared intently down another street, gazing at its emptiness. Lix quickly raised her camera, snapped his photo before he could be taken from his reverie.

“Disculpe, señor.” Lix pitched her voice to carry. “Usted me podría decir donde está la fuente?”

His silence was her first cause of alarm. “La fuente?”

“Si.”

“En este pueblo?”

Her heart sank. “Si, en este pueblo.”

“En ruinas.” Her face must have fallen, because he adds: “Sigame.”

It would have gone against her nature as well as her training to disobey his command. Obediently she followed him, into his own house, into his hallway. Here he gestured for her to stop, while he filled her canteen from the trough in the kitchen. Lix had thanked him, and departed. She had never learned where he drew the water. And in the rest of the village, she had seen not so much as the twitch of a curtain.

She had walked the seven kilometers to the next town on her grease-stained map. She had, that is, walked most of it; and then she had run, swiftly and efficiently, grateful for her trousers, determined to get out ahead of whatever vehicles were raising dust from the single road.

Invisibility is the photographer’s first duty. So Lix had run hard until finding a place of retreat: naturally enough, the church. She had pushed her hair off her face with the back of one wrist — and tripped over one of the medieval flagstones.

“Shit!” She had been relieved, at first, to find that there was no one there to hear her curse aloud and in English. She had taken a breath, taken a drink, and straightened her clothing before advancing into the church’s interior.

“Be careful,” said a dark, amused, and unmistakably English voice, from somewhere within the nave. “You’ll get dust on the lens.”


End file.
